Arguments or Logic

The great debates in Parliament get lots of attention. But the really important debates take place in the Committee Rooms and the corridors.

So it was not particularly unusual to find me sitting with a government Minister at a table in our canteen in Edinburgh. With us were tenant farmers to whom the fine detail of the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Bill mattered a great deal.

And the subject of debate at lunch? Whether an SNP Amendment to an Executive Amendment should be supported. We wanted, and the tenant farmers wanted, the operation of a key part of the Bill to be back-dated to Aprtil 2002. The Minister and his civil servants wanted September.

In the event, I spoke later in the Chamber using the notes written over lunch on a canteen napkin. A first I think!

But the government remained obdurate and our proposal fell. Was that the end of the matter? Not really.

The parties to this issue outside the Parliament had actually agreed that our amendment made sense. An unusual alliance, the National Farmers’ Union Scotland, the Scottish Tenant Farmers Action Group and the Scottish Landowners Federation. Yes – tenants and landlords working together to common purpose.

The SLF even put down a note from the public gallery in Parliament so the Minister was aware that they supported our amendment.

But at the end of the day the timidity of the Minister’s civil servants won the day. The amendment fell. And that happens a depressingly large number of times.

In the Scottish Parliament we can make things happen by building alliances. That was how I managed the MSP end of the Peterhead Prison campaign and ended up saving that institution.

The over-arching question remains – what directs political decision-making?

In a word – fear. Fear of losing the next vote in Parliament. Fear of losing the next election. Fear of exposure in the press.

So where a concensus can be built – as with the Argicultural Holdings Bill – many opposition amendments, especially those pressed in Committee, can be accepted and Bills improved.

But logic – the power of evidence – plays a smaller part in decision-making. So even when the Rural Development Committee came forward with cross-party agreement firmly based on evidence drawn from meetings in Aberdeen and Edinburgh that suggested a different way forward for fishing recovery, it could still be rejected.

Despite the many individuals and fishing organisations who gave evidence – and who often submitted written material to make sure that we knew the right questions – Ministers still determine outcomes.

And Ministers’ advisors are civil servants who will keep whispering ‘caution, caution’ in their Minister’s ear.

The first task of a new government after the forthcming elections is to make sure that they control their civil servant advisors and that they are not controlled by them.

So if we are going to get a change in fishing policy, we need a change of ministers. And that means a change of government.

Still Crusading

The fishing industry is one with many competing interests. Inevitably when prices in the market are high, the skippers and crews are happy – provided they are first in with their fish and have enough on board to make money.

Processors suffer when supplies are short and prices high.

But at the moment prices are low. So catchers are suffering. And this on top of the EU’s pernicious restrictions.

So it is galling for everyone – including the consumers – that supermarket prices have not budged an inch while landing prices are so low.

With the traditional fishmonger disappearing from High Streets across Scotland, the big retailers control fish sales.

That means that they set the price for supplies and control what we pay. Margins – the profit they make – are higher in our supermarkets than in the USA for example.

So it is good to see the first signs of some coming together in the fishing industry. The Fishermen’s Association has joined with Northern Irish fishing interests to make a stronger, bigger negotiating body.

Now that more and more politicians agree with me when I say that getting out of this EU Common Fishing Policy must be a priority, it should be time for divisions in the industry on this issue to end.

And not just between the various catchers’ organisations but stretching out to create an alliance between the SFF, FAL, the processors and the new Fishing Services Association. Because as the old saying goes – if we don’t hang together then surely we will be hanged together.

Will not EU Commissioner Fischler just rub his hands in glee at every split and division in our industry and every attempt to split major political parties from fishing?

That’s why the Cod Crusaders were giving MSPs fresh fish this week. We may not have it much longer unless we unite.